GHENT, Belgium, January 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Ablynx, the pioneer in Nanobody(TM) discovery and development, today announced that it has signed a collaboration agreement with Novartis to discover and develop therapeutic Nanobodies(TM) against a number of targets in a range of disease areas.
Under the terms of the agreement, Ablynx will receive upfront fees, license fees and funding for research and development. In addition, Ablynx will be eligible for milestone payments and royalties upon commercialization. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Both companies will collaborate to discover and develop novel Nanobody(TM) based therapeutics against disease targets that are difficult to address with conventional antibodies or their fragments. Novartis has exclusive rights to develop and commercialize the Nanobody(TM) products resulting from the collaboration.
Dr Mark Vaeck, Chief Executive Officer of Ablynx, commented:
“We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Novartis, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies with a significant track record in innovative drug development. This partnership is the second of a number of corporate alliances that Ablynx will be announcing in the course of 2006 and further validates our Nanobody(TM) platform as a promising discovery engine for novel breakthrough therapeutics. It also shows the continued execution of our corporate strategy which comprises building a broad portfolio of Nanobody(TM)-based drugs, from external partnerships as well as from our own internal pipeline.”
Dr Simon Kerry, Director of Business Development at Ablynx, added:
“This is a very significant collaboration across a number of therapeutic areas and targets. We are delighted to have signed a deal with a company of such a standing as Novartis underlining the potential of Nanobodies(TM) as a novel and promising class of drugs.”
About Ablynx
Ablynx is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of Nanobodies(TM), a novel class of therapeutic proteins based on single-domain antibody fragments, for a range of serious and life-threatening human diseases. Ablynx is developing a portfolio of Nanobody(TM) based therapeutic programs in a number of major disease areas, including inflammation, thrombosis, oncology and Alzheimer’s disease. Over the past few years Ablynx has generated Nanobodies(TM) against more than twenty different disease targets, and has obtained positive in vivo efficacy data from animal trials in five major therapeutic programs. Importantly, Ablynx has shown the absence of any detectable immunogenicity for its Nanobody(TM) development candidates in advanced primate studies. Today, three of these programs are in advanced preclinical development, and Ablynx expects to have progressed two of those into clinical trials by early 2007.
Nanobody(TM) based therapeutics represent a major commercial opportunity. Because of their unique structure and unparalleled stability, Nanobodies(TM) can address therapeutic opportunities that are beyond the reach of conventional antibodies or their fragments.
Ablynx holds the dominant patent position in the field of Nanobodies(TM). It has exclusive and worldwide rights to more than forty families of granted patents and pending patent applications, including the patents covering the basic structure, composition, preparation and uses of Nanobodies(TM) (the ‘Hamers patents’) which have been granted in major territories including the US, Europe and Japan. All products, including therapeutics, that contain Nanobodies(TM) are covered by these patents.
Headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, Ablynx has raised over EUR33 million (over US$40 million) from a strong investor consortium including Abingworth Management (UK), Alta Partners (USA), Biotech Fund Flanders (Belgium), Gilde Investment Management (The Netherlands), GIMV (Belgium) and Sofinnova Partners (France).
For further information please visit the website at www.ablynx.com
Ablynx
CONTACT: Media relations for Ablynx: Sue Charles, MA, MBA, CEO, NorthbankCommunications, Tel : +44-(0)-20-7886-8152, Email:s.charles@northbankcommunications.com, Christelle Kerouedan, Ph.D., AccountManager, Northbank Communications, Tel: +44-(0)-20-7101-8361, Email:c.kerouedan@northbankcommunications.com, At Ablynx: Mark Vaeck, Ph.D., CEO,Ablynx NV, Tel: +32-(0)-9-261-06-20, Email: mark.vaeck@ablynx.com, SimonKerry, Ph.D., MBA, Director of Bus. Dev., Ablynx NV, Tel:+32-(0)-9-261-06-35, Email: simon.kerry@ablynx.com
